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The Box Office:

If ever there was a film that would fall victim to the infamous "Tomb Raider Trap", it is this one. The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey disappointed a large number of hardcore fans but still ended up with $1 billion worldwide. So while The Desolation of Smaug is somewhat better in a number of key areas (more action, better special effects, etc.), will the casual fans who felt, uh, burned by the first outing show up this time around in as great a number?

Even if The Hobbit 2 is "better" than The Hobbit 1, we're still looking at a situation not unlike Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones where the more action-packed and crowd-pleasing sequel ($649m) made less than the allegedly unloved original ($925m). Now of course the entire Hobbit trilogy basically paid for itself via the last film, so whatever money the last two make is all-but icing on a very lucrative cake. For the record, when I talk about lower grosses the second time around, I'm not talking about anything resembling a flop or even a financial disappointment.

Even if The Hobbit part 2 of 3ends up taking a substantial dive, it's still probably looking at (off the top of my head and not official predictions) $240 million domestic and $750m worldwide. We're still talking massive numbers. The Peter Jackson sequel/prequel is still going to benefit from those legendary December legs, a lack of mega-fantasy competition over Christmas weekend (it's mostly Oscar bait and adult genre fare) as well as a relatively weak January slate. Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit is the only big movie opening wide next month outside of the expansion of Mark Wahlberg'sLone Survivor.

All of this is a way of saying that I don't feel entirely comfortable making any kind of box office predictions at this point, not even regarding opening weekend (off the record I'd say just over/under the $83m that the last Hobbit debuted with). But again, with numbers this large and the first film paying for most of the costs associated with the entire trilogy, this is more about pride than a return on investments.

The Review:

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug is technically "better" than The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey in the same way Attack of the Clones was technically "better" than The Phantom Menace. This second film isn't superior so much as it gives the fans what they claim they want. In this case, it cuts right to the chase and has quite a bit more action than the last installment. It has a return appearance by a fan-favorite as well as a completely invented ass-kicking female character. It ends its first act with a genuine all-time classic action beat and has some solid creature work when the title character finally shows up in the third act. But it's still painfully weak in the areas of writing and plotting. It lacks any real character development for its leads and still lacks any sense of danger or emotional pathos. It's "better" while still not qualifying as "good".

The film is still, like the last installment, a plodding journey with little character development and no urgency. It is still not a patch on the original Lord of the Rings series and remains a sad example of how you sometimes can't go home again. Like the prior installment, the film constantly sets out to desperately attempt to convince us that the journey of a handful of dwarfs to steal gold back from a dragon is every bit as important as the quest to toss a world-killing ring into a volcano. The film is filled with random characters explaining in explicit detail both how the world is in immediate peril for some arbitrary reason and how treacherous the journey will be for our would-be heroes. But it's all for naught, as we still have little emotional investment in the characters throwing themselves in and out of harm's way.

Ironically the only real character work comes from the above-mentioned "new" character, Tauriel, played by Evangeline Lilly. She is introduced as a one-woman orc killing machine and gets a number of terrific action beats. Unfortunately the film immediately involves her in a romantic triangle purely on account of her gender and then has her turn her back on her duties to care for a handsome wounded dwarf (Aidan Turner) who she fancies. Still, my distaste in how she's written should not negate the fact that the female supporting character gets all of the best action beats and will likely be a fan favorite. 9-year old girls will just be happy to see a super-heroic female character to cheer for alongside all of the male heroes, and that's gotta count for something.

The other party to said love triangle is Legolas (Orlando Bloom), who wasn't in The Hobbit but makes a logical reinsertion since elves are basically immortal anyway. But Bloom looks noticeably older as the younger version of himself, and he's given little to do other than be jealous and kill orcs, one of which he still does very well. Legolas and Tauriel's brief conversations about the elves' responsibility to a world going to rot while they sit in their ivory tower to basically live forever are interesting, but serve only to repeat material from The Two Towers. The good news is that Bloom and Lilly show up for several genuinely entertaining scenes of orc slaughter. It is in these moments Peter Jackson reminds us what a great action director he can be.

Even if we have little emotional investment in the carnage, the fights and chases are still shot and staged with genuine creativity while edited in long fluid takes for maximum clarify. The film's first act contains both an entertaining battle with giant spiders as well as a knock-out chase sequence involving waterfalls and barrels that looks like Donkey Kong Country come to life. This first act climax is easily the best action sequence in a bad action movie since Optimus Prime's IMAX forest fight from Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. For those who just want action and a giant dragon being menacing and scary, they will surely walk away having gotten their money's worth, no matter which format they chose. Sadly the screening was in 24pfs 3D, so I can't speak for any improvements in the 48fps presentation or the overall quality of the IMAX presentation.

But the Lord of the Rings trilogy was more than just action and incident. It was about something more than just "friendship" and "courage through mass killing" and offered characters who captured our emotional engagement and our rooting interest. It is in the plotting and character work that this film falls so short. The film has no real reason for us to care if the Bilbo and the dwarfs succeed in their journey. Yet it spends much of its running time attempting to convince us otherwise via endless foreboding monologues that amount to nothing. Thorin's (Richard Armitrage) grand scheme to sneak into Smaug's cave and hope-against-hope that they do not wake him is a pretty terrible plan. But the film's insistence on selling the allegedly importance of this quest cancels out any attempts to deal with the hubris or recklessness on display in any meaningful fashion. Smaug looks incredible and Benedict Cumberbatch's monologuing with Bilbo (Martin Freeman) is a highlight, but then the film spends the next half hour with monotonous would-be action of little consequence before arbitrarily coming to an end.

There is so little character work or any real story progression that one could merely come in at the last half-hour and be all set for the third film next year. The film runs over 2.5 hours, yet is filled to the brim with padding, narrative strands, and pointless characters that exist purely to fill up the time and/or attempt to sell the stakes in a journey that has few to speak of. As a weightless action picture, I suppose it fits the bill, but the hour of pure dead air between the waterfall chase and the Smaug sequences will test all but the most die-hard Tolkien fans. I can't speak of films never made, but I cannot help but wonder how much tighter and more efficient the originally-planned two Hobbit films would have been compared to the bloated three-film affair we now have.

For those who only want decent special effects and a few quality action sequences in a fantasy setting, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug will arguably fit the bill. But it is beyond sad that the Lord of the Rings series, which once exemplified all that a blockbuster could be, has now found itself becoming just another empty spectacle. We can and should expect more because we know what "more" looks like from the parties involved, which we are reminded of any time we hear a piece of music from the original trilogy. On a purely visceral level The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug is a "better" film than The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, but it fails to rectify any of the fatal issues at play. It is still not nearly good enough.

Unless the final chapter can pull out something truly spectacular, this Hobbit trilogy will likely exist purely as a footnote to one of the greatest cinematic accomplishments of our time.